I usually give tips on this blog on what a speaker should do or apply in his speech and presentations to make him look professional, make him effective and more interesting and captivating to the audience. On this post however, let me give you a few quick tips on what NOT to do instead:

Begin your talk or presentation with an agenda slide. It’s unnecessary and your audience doesn’t really care. Instead, say or do something that will grab their attention right from the get-go.

Let your audience hold their questions until the end.

Make visual aids that are hard to process. They take the attention of the audience away from you.

The three components below are vital to creating impact in your presentations. Make sure that you practice them.

1. Confidence: It doesn’t matter how many audience there are. A public speaker must always exude confidence when in public. This adds to his/her credibility and professionalism.

2. Knowledge: As the saying goes, “knowledge is power”. As a speaker, you should always have something relevant to share to your audience. He or she must know the ins and outs of the topic at hand in order for the audience to see him or her as a person of authority.

3. Delivery: Don’t overwhelm the audience with the amount of information you show them but rather make them understand your message in a meaningful way that they can resonate with.

PowerPoint is a wonderful that presenters can use to make their presentations more effective. Below are five tips you can apply when using PowerPoint in your presentation:

Make sure that the images you use stand out. They should be relevant which means they support your goal and the message your conveying to your audience. This way, they can easily remember the lesson you’re teaching even long after your presentation is done.

Go for simplicity. The more simple the slides, the better. Avoid using complicated graphs and charts as well as long texts.

Make sure that your audience knows the meaning of the acronyms and difficult terms you use.

Make sure your audience can resonate and relate well with your audience. Don’t just use general photos. If you are talking to a group of teachers, use photos of different schools they know or pictures of the campus where they teach.

Facial expressions are non-verbal expressions and non-verbal expressions comprise most of how we communicate with other people. However, there are times, when a neutral facial expression is best used in order to communicate well with your audience especially when presenting. Here are those times:

1. When answering a question especially one that is confrontational or argumentative, you would want to keep your cool to show that you are in control of the situation. This further shows credibility, maturity and professionalism.

2. When someone gives the wrong answer to a question so you won’t embarrass the person who gave the wrong answer and will encourage others to answer your question.

3. When you are motivating your audience to give different perspectives and opinions.